- Alcohol
- Drugs
Eleven years ago (pretty much to the day), I was in Virginia, living in a small one-bedroom duplex. I did not have a steady job, could not pay my bills, and was once again locked hopelessly in a “dance with the dueling sisters”, as I liked to call it. “Heroin and crack cocaine addiction” is what others would call it.
I had yet again fallen prey to that odd mental twist: “this time it will be different!” They told me in the last rehab I had been to, “if you relapse, come back in. All you are doing is changing your clean date.” What I heard was, “You can take drug vacations, just come back in …”
What I forgot, what I had to learn yet one more time, was that when I start, I cannot stop. I have a disease; it is chronic, fatal if not treated, and it kills indiscriminately.
I was born the youngest of eight children to depression-era parents. My dad was a fighter pilot in the Air Force, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. When I was just a few weeks old, the unthinkable happened. My brother Jimmy (18) and sister Kathy (12) died in a car accident. Some people say that my mother was never the same. Who could blame her?
That single event did untold damage to my family and my life forever. I also felt afraid of the chaos and violence that regularly broke out in my house regularly. My oldest memory is of one of those chaotic nights. I was eleven when the Grim Reaper showed its ugly face again in my life: my mother died when I was eleven.
Little boys are not supposed to lose their mother. Regrettably, the violence escalated in my house after that, and my siblings scattered as soon as they could leave. Fortunately, my father found and married an angel– Olivia was her name. She forever changed the landscape of my family as well as my life. She had a way of deescalating things; she was class personified. My father just knew to not challenge her for she would have left him and taken me with her. Bad things happen to good people, and a short seven years later, the rider on that pale horse visited my family again and took our angel. I was twenty at that time and had been out of my father’s house for a year.
My substance use started when I was thirteen. I was a shy, pudgy kid, with big glasses, and a low self-esteem. We moved to Northern Virginia, and the first person I met asked me if I smoked pot. Wanting to fit in, I said yes! Within a year, I was smoking multiple times daily and drinking most weekends.
My use escalated in high school and my father stared catching me high, drunk, or both. We would argue, and I would promise to stop, but I never did. My father laid in wait until he found some pot in my clothes and called the police. My choice was to either be arrested or go to a rehab. This marked my first stint in a rehabilitation center. I lied the whole way through the ninety days I was there. I felt that I just couldn’t be an alcoholic and a drug addict– no way, not me, not at 18.
Little did I know that the seeds that were planted there would grow into a mighty tree that would change my life. After I graduated from rehab, my father found out I was still contacting my old friends, so he asked me to leave the house. He was very kind. He gave me a 1967 Mustang we had rebuilt and enough money and support to get up on my feet.
Out on my own, and left to my own devices, my use escalated year after year. The amounts, types, and frequencies all escalated. By the time I was in my early thirties, I had been convicted of driving while intoxicated two times, and I was growing pot in most of the rooms in my house for extra money, all while trying to build a carpet cleaning business. It truly was a full-time job! I had also torn through two unhealthy 7-10 year-long relationships. I targeted younger women who did not have jobs or money, who relied on me for everything which made it particularly impossible for them to leave.
My life looked good from the outside, but it was a maelstrom on the inside. Fear in general and especially fear of abandonment, along with a sense of disillusionment, self-pity, regret, resentment, anger, and a feeling of malaise permeated every aspect of my life.
My father died when I was about 38. This was a different type of death, one unlike the others I had experienced. It was not unexpected; he was 76 years old. I was able to spend about half of the last three months of his life helping take care of him. It was a time for the family to come together and for all of us to heal old wounds. It’s perverted, but I remember being so proud of myself for not stealing any of his liquid morphine. I may have needed it as much as he did.
His death hit me hard, and yet again, my use picked up. This is when heroin really saturated the very fabric of my life. I became physically addicted, and spiritually bankrupt. I used to live, and lived to use! I had tried to stay off of heroin and crack and just drink alcohol for years. But it was always just a matter of time before I was off to the races. Alcohol was not my problem… or so I thought.
Just when things look their bleakest, sometimes they get worse. My oldest brother, Tom, completed suicide a year after my father’s death. He did it on the anniversary of Jimmy and Kathy’s death.
I look back on that time now and realize that his death saved mine. I saw the devastation his death caused to my family, and especially to my sisters. I knew I was killing myself, but much more slowly than he did. I got honest and told my family what was going on. This was not the first time I had done this, but I was in trouble this time. I had taken a deposit from two customers for large purchases and spent it on drugs. I was in a jam!
I remember the day very clearly. Two of my sisters and I went to see “Cinderella Man.” Afterwards, we were sitting on one sister’s deck, and she explained to me that sometimes you just need to tear a structure down, dig a new foundation, and start again. Tom’s wife agreed to help me with the deposit money I stole, and she paid the down payment for the last rehab I went to. I was ready for a change! I wanted to trade my old life in for a new one. Those seeds that were planted so many years ago sprung from the ground at break neck speed.
The rehab was in Virginia and they saved my life. They made us go to six meetings a day for thirty days. That totals 180 meetings in one month. By the way, my sister-in-law never helped me with the deposits– I had to work that out on my own. We do what we need to do to get someone in treatment! I came out of there and moved into one of my sister’s houses. Her and her husband gave me a place to live, food, and cash to get on my feet.
After a short time, I moved out of her house to that little one-bedroom place in Buckroe Beach, and I had already returned to using again. It was going to be “different” this time, it was just a “drug vacation”. That’s the disease, it is insidious like that.
So, eleven years ago, around the 22nd of March 2006, I came to North Carolina to paint the interior of my sister’s house. She had moved most all of her furniture into the middle of the rooms so I could get to the walls and ceilings. She had been paying my cell phone bill, and this was how I was going to repay her. The problem is, I underestimated how much heroin I needed. I always seemed to do that. It never lasted like I thought it would! I was dope sick, withdrawing, and just pitiful. I had disrupted my sister’s entire family, and this was the lowest point in my life.
I made the best decision I have ever made– I told my sister that I was not making good decisions and that her and the my siblings should decide what I should do. The next day, she told me that I was moving in with her and her family. She said, “We are going to do whatever it takes; don’t work, just go to meetings.” This is when I was finally able to change in that old life for a new one. It took several years of five to six meetings per week, but the fog cleared, and the sober time compiled.
I found good employment, I was a branch manager, a salesman, and I was making more money than I ever had. Then came the Great Recession and took the job away. It is funny–life that is, sometimes what we think is bad is actually good, maybe even great. I decided that this Higher Power that helped me get sober– the Universe, God, Buddha, whatever you want to call it– did not get me sober to chase money. So I decided to go to college at age 45 and get a degree in psychology, then a master’s degree in social work.
That’s where I am today. I am enrolled at a university in North Carolina in their Master’s in Social Work program after I graduated from there with my undergraduate degree. I have been sober for eleven years. I finally did paint my sister’s house. I put new floors in it, a new deck on the back, and replaced all of her windows to boot. I lived with her for seven years, longer than any other house in my life. I will graduate in the spring of 2018 becoming a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Licensed Clinical Addiction Specialist.
Life is good, but it gets better. If someone asked me what the perfect situation to go to grad school was, I would not have explained how good it ended up being. I reached out to a friend who introduced me to an Associate Dean of Students and the Director of Student Wellness in North Carolina. I wanted to volunteer at the college. We quickly became friends, and he asked me to sit in on some interviews. They ask students to sit in on interviews at universities. Afterward, we would discuss each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. All the while, I was explaining what I thought the position needed– if I were him, what I would be looking for. Those years of being a business owner were paying off.
That search failed, and the position was posted again. The dean asked me to apply for the position. I was the candidate the selection committee chose. So, I am the Program Coordinator of Recovery Initiatives at the university. I work with a great bunch of students who are in recovery from substance use disorder, while I attend grad school. This work is so rewarding, seeing these young minds grow and expand.
Recently, one of my sisters asked me what makes me happy. I told her when I am the first phone call a student makes when they need help, I am happy. The joy of being of service, intersected with purpose, passion, and drive, explains my life today. I was given a second chance at life. I now know that it came with a debt to be repaid. The work I do, that I love to do, is the repayment.
I just had no idea that recovery was so great. If I had known, I’d had done it a long time ago!